Fill up your bucket

     Wow! It’s been just shy of 2 years, since the last time I blogged. Is it still a thing? Regardless, it’ll still be a thing for myself. I need it to be a thing. So much has happened in these past two years. I’ve lived. I’ve cried. I started a podcast with my best friend. I’m sure that’ll be my next blog post. I’ve lost. I’v cried a whole lot more. 

    I think that’s why I’m here today. Writing has always been a safe place for me. Some people my age have YouTube. I’ve tried that route before. There’s something so vulnerable about crying on the internet for everyone to see. If that’s your safe place, pitch a tent and stay there. We all deal with emotions differently. I’m in a place where my mind scares me. It’s loud and quiet at the very same time. It never sleeps. It never eases. Think of a silent film where you so desperately wish to hear the voices but you also just want the film to stop playing. It just keeps playing night after night. I remembered once in a blue moon I used to sit down and blog. I was so trendy back then. Well I thought I was. English and literature have always been a place I felt welcomed. Where I Knew more than others. You could give me three words and I could write a short story in less than five minutes. You can thank my 5th grade teacher Mrs. Skelly for that hidden talent. Anyways, let me actually get to why I’ve decided to dust off my keyboard after almost 2 years. 

Grief 

    It’s such a simple word. Just five little letters. It can also be a word so big your afraid you may be swallowed up by it. Somedays it feels like that anyways. In June 2021 I lost a fraction of my heart. That sounds dramatic but that’s exactly how grief makes you feel. On June 7, 2021 while I was checking in my bag at the tiny Shreveport airport my husband took me by the arms. He had just heard from my Papa. My Granny had taken her last breath and gone to be with the lord. I didn’t cry. I went into oldest sibling mode. I had to get home. I had to get to my mom. I had to do everything. My brain was screaming it at me. I thought everyone in the airport could hear it. I kissed my husband goodbye. Uncle Sam doesn’t care when you are facing your biggest obstacles in life. I knew he had to stay. I felt anger. I was so close to being home to give my final goodbyes. I was just a 2 hour plane ride away. I was so close. I’ve said that last line to myself on repeat these past 8 months. I found comfort knowing my Papa was there holding her hand till the very last second. Even after. He wouldn’t leave her side until they finally took her away. The plane ride was so lonely. I was by myself. Nobody knew what I was going through. I talked to my Granny the whole plan ride. Silently crying under my mask. Thank goodness for my mask. I just couldn’t have handled if the flight attendant asked if I was ok. 

As soon as I landed I didn’t sleep for the next two weeks. Taking cat naps and feeling energized because at this point my body was on auto pilot. I was just in the back somewhere curled up in a ball. I kept it all in. It was until I sat down at the table to fill out her obituary. Everything hit me. I had just lost the woman that was the start of my existence. Without her almost everyone in the room beside me wouldn’t be here. I thought writing was my safe place but growing up and experiencing grief made me realize she was my safe place. I always felt safe. I was always well fed. Well clothed. My love for reading and furthering my mind came from her. I was learning to exist without her for the first time in 27 years of life. A funeral is really for the living. I went through it all for my mom. She was hysterical. As any daughter would be. I knew the woman laying in the freshly picked out casket was no longer my Granny. As far as I knew she left a week prior. That doesn’t mean I didn’t still feel all those emotions. I just kept it in more. I knew stuff needed to get done. The funeral isn’t the hard part. When you are little they don’t prepare you for the hard part. Although, you’ll never be prepared. 

In the 80’s  before I was even a thought my Granny went through the very same thing. My mom went through the very same I’m experiencing now. She just experienced it at a younger age. At just 38 years old my Granny lost her mama to breast cancer. It rocked my family in 1986 just as it rocked us in 2021. I had heard the stories. My mom talks of her Granny just like I talk of mine. As i grew up I lost more and more family members to cancer. I watched friends lose loved ones as well. I still remember it clearly. In April 2021 my mom called me and said she’d taken Granny for some tests and I should start getting a bag ready. They’d found cancer in her left breast and it had already spread all throughout her body. There was nothing they could do but make her comfortable. This is the part they don’t warn you about. The part way worse in my opinion than saying goodbye or funerals. Watching the one you love with all your heart cry out in pain and not be able to do anything. Then the morphine takes away their appetite. Then the morphine takes away their memory. Until there’s nothing left. Just an empty shell. The physical body is still alive but your loved one has left the building. It’s a sight and experience I wound’t wish on even my worst enemy. 

As of Monday it’s been 8 months since she left us. I watched my Papa stand up at the funeral and profess his unconditional love for the woman he met back in the early 1960’s when she was just 14 and he was 16. Not all of it was bad. I watched people after people profess their love for her. I even stood up and spoke. It wasn’t gracious. I had to stop my crocodile tears but I made it through it. Today would have been her 74th birthday. Instead it’s her 1st heavenly birthday and that’s ok. My best friend sent me a text and told me to, “Fill up my bucket today”. So here I am filling up my bucket. Speaking her name into existence still. She’ll always be in my heart. I’ll keep writing for her. I’ll keep doing the things we both love.

If you’ve made it this far I hope you remember to stop and fill u your bucket. Sometimes we forget. Until it’s too late. Then our bucket have rusted and have holes in them. Never to be filled again. I hope you find this with love and grace. Until I write again…..Bethany